Just fancy this. From August 2015 to June last year, he went through 23 races without greeting the judge and saw his rating drop to the Class 5 range of 43.

Then, all of a sudden, the "ugly duckling" transformed into the graceful Black Swan, who glided away to pick up 33 points from five victories in 11 starts and become a Dester Singapore Gold Cup aspirant.

True to what racecaller Matthew Jones said, the Steven Burridge-trained five-year-old Australian-bred is one of the real improvers at Kranji - from a Class 5 maiden to a potential Gold Cup runner in November.

It was not until his 24th start on June 11 last year that Black Swan opened winning accounts in a Class 5 event over the new Gold Cup distance of 2,000m. Until last year, the premier classic was run over 2,200m.

Two more wins followed in Class 4, the second in the course-record time of 1min 51.07sec for the Polytrack 1,800m.

After a third and a second placing, Black Swan notched his fourth success in a Polytrack race over 1,700m as the $13 favourite in Class 3.